Bart slowly scanned the large stretch of land in Eastern Oregon that he called home. The sun was approaching the horizon, bathing him in an eerie orange.

He bought the land with a major investment he made just after World War II. He did well with the cattle, until he sold them a month before. The sale put into a safe trust for his grandchildren, provided they took up a marketable trade.

(Author’s note: Starting next week, I will be taking a social media break. It will not impact writing, but contact on Twitter, Gab, and Facebook will be curbed for one month. E-mail will be alright, if you need to. Here’s today’s Fictioneers…)

On one hand, I see like a child. Innocence, virtue, trust, all in one place. One another hand, I see death, vindictiveness, the decay of the world. And on the third hand, the one never seen, there’s pain, deception, and even love.

Every slap a betrayal, every push a declaration of love, every tear a cry for relief and comfort. And each time I am asked the same question: Is it all worth it?

(Author’s Note: I’d like to give a shout out to Jason E. Gillikin, a good friend of mine who I have had the pleasure of contacting and being in contact with for many years. We both grew in our writing, and he is the Editor in Chief of Caffeinated Press, an anthology publisher based out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has helped me, in many ways, to get back to writing the way it should be. If you get a chance, you should visit his website: http://www.jegillikin.org/ )

Never one to dally, he reached over to the table and grabbed a charcoal pencil and his paper, and started to sketch.

A smooth nose, sleek lines jutting back from the rounded nose. A bump on the top towards the front, and a long tubular body. Each part of the drawing called upon the memory of his dream, the horror and awe of what he imagined.

Two ellipses, flattened, bisected the main body, rounding on either side, but thin enough to look like the blade of a knife.

Author’s note: I hope everyone is doing alright. I’ve been in a real big funk when it comes to writing new stuff, mostly due to the fact that my school writing has been taking up most of my time. However, I am planning on putting up a bunch of stuff over the next week as I have a mid-semester break coming up. Whether it gets posted or not, that’s a different story. But we shall see.

Also, there were some questions about last week’s story. The answer It was an allegorical story that was related to a slate of issues on college campuses in America, where men and even some women have been accused of rape. They get taken through tribunals on campus instead of through the legal/police process. It ruins their lives, and indirectly, all parties’ lives. So for those who were curious, now you know…the rest of the story. (RIP Paul Harvey)

The young lady was pulled back from the railing, the man holding her back against him.
“You’re going to be fine,” he whispered, clutching the crying woman as she let all her misery out.
He didn’t plan to be there. He was just driving, and there was someone where he was just a few months ago.
He just held her close when he heard a loud bang.
He turned around, and saw the bright lights of another car bearing down upon him. She looked up and screamed.
He pushed her away, seconds before the car hit him, carrying him over the side.
She screamed in horror as she heard nothing but the sound of the car hitting the water.
She sat, screaming and shaking as the ambulances approached.

One of the biggest problems with schools in this day in age is that you can’t actually see history happen. That’s what happens when you’re being educated on a space station somewhere between Jupiter and Uranus. You can see some things happen, but they’re so miniscule that if you blink, you miss it.

It’s 2115, and I’m sitting in another boring history class. We talk about the 21st century and the 20th century, with theories about how and why everything went wrong. We hear about how our grandparents from Russia, the then United States of America, China, a united Korea, and India, all got together to start colonizing other planets. That was 2020. And in almost 95 years, we’ve been able to expand all the way out here. However, Earth went all wrong. It went sideways, and descended into madness just after people started moving to the Moon.

They never tell you when in history, the precise moment when everything went wrong for the world. They never tell you about the moment when something pinged, and the start of the fall occurred.

That’s why I decided to do something about it. Brilliant little me decided to create the first watch to warp the space-time continuum, to go back and observe periods of time. I don’t know what people are taught, but time isn’t as ball-shaped or timey wimey as people think.

It was October 9th, 2115 when I made the first jump. I programmed it into an important period of time in the 21st century. However, to quote an ancestral singer named Phil Collins, “something happened on the way to Heaven.” It took me farther than I cared to go, and it took me to a scene that I never wanted to see or go to.

I materialized at Park Pier 40, in New York City. It was a beautiful sight, a clear day that I can very much remember. I looked at my watch to see where I ended up.

8:45AM, Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.

I looked up at the sky, to the south, and I heard the great engines of what my teachers called an airplane. Before my eyes, within a minute, I saw the plane slam into a building.

I remember seeing this in news-snippets that they’d show us in class, but I really didn’t understand the impact until I could see it for myself. What I saw shocked me to the core, as seeing it in person is much more sense-based. I stood there for an hour, watching the second plane fly into the other tower, and both of them collapsing.

I suspected, however, that there was more to the story than a terrorist attack. That the reason for Earth’s complete breakdown of civilization was not held in the three buildings and 4 planes that were used to kill thousands of people and start a major factional divide between spheres of influence.

I was about to program my way back home, when I noticed a weird light on my watch. I looked, and before I could press anything, the whole entire landscape that I saw warped around me and twisted into a sort of vertigous mess of colors. I blacked out, as my mind just couldn’t process all the stuff going through it. I woke up sitting in a park, in a very green city, looking at people milling around. It wasn’t New York, I could tell you that much.

I walked around for a few minutes, to get my bearings and see if I could find a newspaper or something with a date on it. As luck would have it, I found what they called a newspaper kiosk at the corner of the park. I walked up and looked at the main newspaper. I apparently landed in Seattle, Washington, on November 25th, 1991. The paper, something once referred to as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, had for a sideline “Seattle’s Nirvana breaks top 10.”

I mused to myself that a musical band or event would like not be what ends up breaking the Earth 40 years in the future. Still, I looked at the people. Unlike 2001, the people in 1991 were a little jumpy but not really like the 2001 folks. They seemed to have a lot more hope in their eyes, though it seemed like there was a little fade. So, I spent the next 4 hours watching people and enjoying real Earth foods. Coffee was something I liked, but to actually have it brewed right there was a feat of awesomeness that I don’t think I could ever believe.

After the four hours were up, I was walking around when I heard a beep from my watch. I looked down and it was glowing red again. Uh-oh, I guess that coffee was going to come up after all. Again, a major vertigous spin occurred and I felt like a cat inside a washing machine. Until I landed, face first, onto a concrete sidewalk.

I looked up and I noticed that everything was clean. Really clean. The cars were very weird looking, they actually had a boxy definition and were very distinctive. I looked around, and recognized a landmark from where I was standing. I recognized the bright white of the Coit Tower in the distance, realizing that I was in San Francisco.

I looked around the area, and saw a newspaper that was rolled up in front of a storefront. It looked to be around 9AM or so, on a bright day, and so I decided to take a peek. The date landed me on April 17, 1946.

Wait. 1946?!?!

Nothing happened at ALL on this date. I scrambled around the area, looking for some indication that something big was going to happen. I passed a bookstore along the way down the street, but something inside told me to stop. It told me to stop and go back. I went back to take a look at the bookstore I had passed, as my gut was saying “You wanna know? Here ya go.” I looked all throughout the entire window display that was up and I saw a book, seemingly innocent and just sitting there. A small card underneath said “The latest for the home, to take care of the family.”

After I saw the title of the book, everything suddenly clicked. The start of the decline of Earth’s civilization didn’t start with a terrorist attack, or a musical interlude. It started with 4 words and 1 name:

It was called “Baby and Child Care”. The author was Dr. Benjamin Spock.

I looked at my watch, after it made a slightly different sound. This time, it glowed green. I knew that my adventure would come to an end, and the answers that I found were going to be unbelievable. However, I happen to think that I will finally be able to get an A on my history paper, and make some people question everything they know.

Klaus started to stir, as the winds gently caressed his face. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He looked around, and found himself on a beautiful windswept beach.

The sands were like salt and pepper, dark and light waves of sand coarsing across the entire beach. He saw the ocean’s waves crest and fall, the tide coming in and going out. The sky was a beautiful blue, with the sun overhead as though it was late afternoon. It was, in his mind, the perfect time and perfect place. It was where he wanted to be for his entire life, and he was there now.

He started walking down the beach, letting the waves lap at his feet as they lazily came and went. He breathed in the sea air, the scent of salt and marine life wafting like a gentle perfume into his nostrils. He walked for what seemed to be a long time, when he saw someone in the distance.

He continued walking as the figure in the distance got closer. He was happy that he wasn’t going to be the only one on this beach. He kept walking, kicking piles of sand and leaving his footprints behind on the soggy sandy shoreline. As he got closer to the figure, he noticed that it was decidedly feminine. And she had a familiar look to her. He got closer, to the point where he got to see her face.

He blanched, because what he saw could not be true. He was looking at his own mother, who had passed on many years before.

“Mom?! Is that you?” he cried out.

She walked over to him and smiled.

“It is me, Klaus,” his mother said.

“But, I thought you were dead.”

“My body is dead, but you know that my spirit lives on.”

Klaus took a nervous breath.

“But, if you’re not here, is this a dream?”

“It very well may be. However, I am here to offer some help.”

He looked at her, and gave her a look of wonder.

“You have been having trouble with your life, and where you want to go.”

“That is true, mom. I have been wanting to do something that is my passion, and the world seems to want me to go a different direction.”

His mom chuckled.

“Do you remember what I told you when you decided to go to business college?”

“I remember. You told me, ‘Don’t do what you want to do for money, do it because you love it.'”

“That’s right. Now, are you doing what you love to do?”

He looked down at his feet, and shook his head.

“I’m doing what I can to survive.”

“Then, my son, you should change it and look at doing something you love.”

He looked at his chestnut-haired mother, smiling cherub-like.

“I still wish you were around, Mom. I could use your help at times.”

She smiled back at him, and bowed.

“My darling son, I’m always around.”

She suddenly disappeared.

It was then that Klaus awoke from his slumber, in a sweat. He looked around the darkened room, at the alarm clock that signaled 4:30AM. As he turned himself over to go to sleep again, he mused at what he dreamed.